Struggles for Multilingualism and Linguistic Citizenship

This book offers a fresh perspective on the social life of multilingualism through the lens of linguistic citizenship. Each chapter illuminates how multilingualism (in both theory and practice) should be, or could be, thought of as inclusive when we recognize what multilingual speakers do with language for voice and agency.

This book offers a fresh perspective on the social life of multilingualism through the lens of the important notion of linguistic citizenship. All of the chapters are underpinned by a theoretical and methodological engagement with linguistic citizenship as a useful heuristic through which to understand sociolinguistic processes in late modernity, focusing in particular on linguistic agency and voices on the margins of our societies. The authors take stock of conservative, liberal, progressive and radical social transformations in democracies in the north and south, and consider the implications for multilingualism as a resource, as a way of life and as a feature of identity politics. Each chapter builds on earlier research on linguistic citizenship by illuminating how multilingualism (in both theory and practice) should be, or could be, thought of as inclusive when we recognize what multilingual speakers do with language for voice and agency.

Contributors
Kenneth Hyltenstam & Caroline Kerfoot: Foreword: Linguistic Citizenship: Unlabeled Forerunners and Recent Trajectories

Chapter 1. Quentin Williams, Ana Deumert & Tommaso M. Milani: Introduction

Part 1: Linguistic Citizenship as Theory and Practice of Multilingualism

Chapter 2. Lionel Wee: The Myth of Orderly Multilingualism

Chapter 3. Kathleen Heugh: Linguistic Citizenship as a Decolonial Lens on Southern Multilingualisms and Epistemologies

Chapter 4. Ben Rampton, Melanie Cooke and Sam Holmes: Linguistic Citizenship and the Questions of Transformation and Marginality

Part 2: Multilingual Narratives and Linguistic Citizenship

Chapter 5. Lauren van Niekerk, Keshia R. Jansen and Zannie Bock: “I Am My Own Coloured”: Navigating Language and Race in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Chapter 6. Marcelyn Oostendorp: Linguistic Citizenship and Non-Citizens: Of Utopias and Dystopias

Part 3: Linguistic Citizenship for Linguistic Knowledge, Digital Activism and Popular Culture 

Chapter 7. Linus Salö and David Karlander: The Travels of Semilingualism: Itineraries of Ire, Impact and Infamy

Chapter 8. Amy Hiss and Amiena Peck: Turbulent Twitter and the Semiotics of Protest at an Ex-Model C School

Chapter 9. Quentin Williams: Remixing Linguistic Citizenship

Part 4: Postscripts: Taking Linguistic Citizenship towards New Directions 

Chapter 10. Emanuel Bylund: WEIRD Psycholinguistics

Chapter 11. Don Kulick: The Sociolinguistics of Responsibility

Christopher Stroud: Afterword: Seeding(Ceding) Linguistically: New Roots for New Routes

Index